Ribbet

In 2005, a tremendous photo editor, Picnik, came out and helped transform free, online photo editing. This site was a great tool for teachers and students alike as the ability to edit photos from any web enabled computer was now available, free. Then around 2012, Google purchased Picnik with the hopes of bringing the photo editing experience to their products. However, this unfortunately meant the closure of Picnik. There was much sadness and disappointment in the education world, myself included, as this tool was perfect for photo editing.

We tried to fill the void with other good online tools like PicMonkey and Pixlr, but there always seemed to be that hole that something wasn't quite right.

Today, as I was looking at some other Chrome tools in the Web store, one of the "suggested for you" links was Ribbet. And I noticed a curious little tree frog looking back at me. So I went to the link and discovered Ribbet is Picnik! Well, not the same company, but basically the same product taken on by a team of programmers and designers who saw the public outcry for Picnik. They even got permission to use the tree frog image.

I don't know how long this has been out there, but I am pretty excited about using Ribbet. Great for online photo editing and collage creation. Just like Picnik, the majority of the site is free, but there are some Premium edits only available to those that upgrade and pay the $29.95/year fee (that is the best price; there is also a $4.95 monthly, and $19.95 six monthly).

So visit www.ribbet.com and get to creating!

Microsoft Office Lens

There are several document scanners out there for the iOS devices and now Microsoft gets in the game with the release of Office Lens.

Lens works in conjunction with your free Microsoft account and works very nicely with the iOS apps that are now free. https://products.office.com/en/mobile/office

Lens will scan a picture, a document, or a whiteboard from  from a variety of angles, resize, straighten, and sharpen the image and convert the image to text. You can then export it to OneNote, Word, PowerPoint, or a PDF document. Right now it is for the iPhone, but it did work on my iPad mini as well. Looks like an Android app will be coming soon. 

Give it a try.  http://www.theverge.com/2015/4/2/8329713/microsoft-office-lens-app-iphone-android

Education on Air

From Google for Education comes a free online conference for educators, Education on Air. The two day conference will be on May 8 & 9, 2015. You can register on their site https://educationonair.withgoogle.com/.

One of the confirmed speakers will be Kevin Brookhouser, Director of Technology at York School. You can keep up with the updates from the Education on Air site or from the Google for Education plus site.

Even if you can't attend every session, they will hopefully be recorded for later viewing. 

Great Stock Photos

One of the harder things to do for a presentation is get good royalty free photographs to display in your presentation. Sure it is easy to just google a topic and use the photo that comes up whether it is free to use or not. Sure there are ways to search on Google for Creative Commons images you can use. But you might still not find what you are looking for. The Stocks comes in to save the day. Advertised as "the best royalty free stock photos in one place", The Stocks features many sites that do offer high-resolution photos free for you to use.
As always I offer a word of caution before using these type of sites with students as the pictures do update. So just because you didn't find any inappropriate pictures today doesn't mean there might not be some tomorrow.
Give The Stocks a try.
http://thestocks.im/

Appy Hour January

Another Appy Hr (or quarter Hr if you read the last blog) for our district leadership team. Gave an update on the SAMR model and our district walk-through data. We have the Substitution level down pat. Now we need to move up along the framework.

Then I was asked to present some norms to use when using technology in the classroom. We had a brief discussion on classroom management tips that should be taken when using technology. Basically,
1. Place device on left corner of the desk until told to use the technology.
2. If it is a tablet or phone, screen side down.
3. If it is a laptop, screen should be at a 45° angle.
   

(elementary version of the norms, iPads on their Tummy and laptops open and close like a shark)

Interestingly enough, most administrators practiced this and I believe were asked to follow it for the rest of the meeting.

This video on classroom management tips was a good eye opener as well.

Talked about the M in SAMR an bit. M stands for Modification. We are now enhancing the task with technology instead of the S and the A where we are enhancing the technology.

Finally, to Appy Hour (now down to 8 minutes). I talked about the camera app and how more and more apps are utilizing the camera. We also got into a discussion about Augmented Reality and how it is becoming more prevalent in life of our students and the education world.. Here are the iOS apps I presented.



Camera Plus - https://itunes.apple.com/us/app/camera-plus-capture-remotely/id330803072?mt=8  - $1.99

Tripod -  https://itunes.apple.com/us/app/tripod/id304112111?mt=8 - $1.99

Photosynth - https://itunes.apple.com/us/app/photosynth/id430065256?mt=8

Groopic - https://itunes.apple.com/us/app/groopic/id584710005?mt=8

Yelp - https://itunes.apple.com/us/app/yelp/id284910350?mt=8

Word Lens - https://itunes.apple.com/us/app/word-lens/id383463868?mt=8

Aurasma - https://itunes.apple.com/us/app/aurasma/id432526396?mt=8

Photomath - https://itunes.apple.com/us/app/photomath/id919087726?mt=8

Anatomy 4D - https://itunes.apple.com/us/app/anatomy-4d/id555741707?mt=8

Easy Measure - https://itunes.apple.com/us/app/easymeasure-measure-your-camera!/id349530105?mt=8

ARBasketball - https://itunes.apple.com/us/app/arbasketball-augmented-reality/id393333529?mt=8

Action Movie FX - https://itunes.apple.com/us/app/action-movie-fx/id489321253?mt=8

Photos and Videos

 

I recently came across two resources for teachers that utilize the Creative Commons to provide photos and videos you can use in your lessons and presentations.

Compfight -  http://compfight.com/ - Compfight is a Flickr Search engine that will allow your searches to display creative commons and commercial license photo that other users have uploaded.

Videezy - http://www.videezy.com/ - Videezy provides B-Roll HD video that other users have uploaded. You do have to create a free account to save and download.


In my first sentence note I said resources for teachers. I have not been through every photo and every video to determine questionable material (and what one calls questionable others may not). As always teachers should thoroughly preview any sites they intend to use with students.